Customer touch points are the spots where a lead comes in contact with a company. Let me explain it with an easy-to-understand example. Picture this: You google search to solve a major pain point of your business. You find a blog that speaks exactly about the problem you encounter. After some time, you take your mobile and start surfing Facebook. While scrolling through, you find an ad showcasing a quick solution to your pain point. Now, immediately your thumb jumps to click the ad which takes you to a company website. After a few more steps, you purchase their product that solves your pain points and becomes their customer.
Google search, blog, Facebook ad and website are the spots you interacted with the company. These spots are known as customer touch points. The journey from your Google search to purchasing the product is the customer journey.
Every touchpoint is equally important in the B2B customer journey. The impression you build at one touchpoint, drives the prospect to the next one. If you hadn’t found value in the Facebook ad and scrolled past it, you wouldn’t have landed at the website. Eventually, the company would have lost a customer. To drive a prospect seamlessly from the initial touchpoint to the final one, you must offer valuable insights at each touchpoint that is relevant to his pain points.
Understanding Customer Touchpoints Leads to Conversions:
The customer touch points for every customer doesn’t take place in the same order as mentioned above. With customer journey being non-linear. every touchpoint is crucial. Messing up even in one touchpoint could lead to missing up of the conversion or delayed conversion. So, engaging with prospects at each of these touchpoints and driving them to conversion is quite hard, isn't it? But, there is a way. Once you understand each stage of your potential customer journey and their touchpoints and optimize your marketing strategy accordingly, you can easily drive them to make a purchase.
For instance, even a potential customer will abandon you and never look back if you start being salesy during the initial touchpoints. Hence, you must craft and optimize your strategy according to the touchpoints.
In B2B, customers are cognitive rather than being emotionally-driven. They always look at how a B2B product could benefit their business. So, the key to achieving conversion is providing valuable insights and information that resonates with the pain points throughout the customer journey. Many B2B companies are unable to spot and understand their customer touchpoints which makes it hard to formulate strategy and gain customers. If you are one among them, no worries. You are lucky. We are about to provide you with the touchpoints that B2B customers mostly interact with at each stage of the buyer journey. There are 3 stages in the B2B Buyer Journey: Awareness Consideration Decision Awareness: In this first stage, the customer understands that he has a need or a business problem to be solved. Keep in mind that in this stage he is keen on solving the problem on his own and not ready to spend money to get things done. All he is looking for is a right and reliable source that can give free information to solve his problem. The common touchpoints for this phase would be: Blog Educational Videos Podcasts Blogs: Similar to you and me, the majority of potential prospects knock on the doors of Google for solutions. They most probably look into ‘How-to’ and ‘Ultimate guide’ kind of blogs. The reason why prospects love these blogs is that they speak exactly about the problem the prospect is facing, elaborate on it, and give a detailed and step-by-step process to solve it. So, you must create value-centric blogs and most importantly, you must have a solid SEO strategy to make your blog reach the maximum potential prospects. Educational Videos: The human brain engages and understands video content easily. So, if you are speaking about a complex B2B topic, going with visuals is a wiser choice. Because the prospect always cares about the values he got after spending his time on specific content. If a prospect doesn’t understand the content, most probably he couldn’t identify the value it provides and give up on it. So, educating your prospects through videos is always a wise move. Podcasts: Podcasts have been a huge hit in recent times. People look at it as a rich source of information. The host invites an industry expert who gives valuable insights, tips and information on a specific topic. Mostly the host would also be from the same industry. So, they always end up asking the relevant questions. Considering the consistent rise in podcast listeners, you can get a huge chunk of potential customers here. Note: Add a sign-up form to all the touchpoints and encourage your prospects to fill it out for more in-depth and actionable insights. This way, you can get the contact information and company details of your prospects that helps in building relationships. Today, the restrictions on third-party cookies halt marketers from knowing their prospect details. With a sign-up form, marketers can have access to their prospects' details which can be utilized for the next stages of the buyer's journey. Consideration: This is the stage where the most important transition happens. The thought of buying a product blooms in the minds of potential prospects at this stage. The prospect will stop trying to solve things on his own and start looking for a solution provider who jumps in and does everything for him. However, they think multiple times before choosing a product. Since there are multiple touchpoints in the consideration phase, we can segment them into two stages. Stage 1: You must focus on building a genuine relationship with your prospect and make yourself a familiar face. The people who filled out the sign-up form in the awareness stage are your potential prospects. It is time to nurture these prospects. The touchpoints that work well at this stage: Newsletters Retargeting Ads Social Media Newsletters: We live in an era where people barely have the patience to spend time reading content. But, statistics on newsletters prove them to be wrong. People who check their mailbox only to find newsletters has been increasing. So, you can leverage this medium and offer beneficial and engaging content. Most importantly, ensure the information you provide is unique and cannot be found elsewhere on the internet. Such practices will make your prospect feel that you are an industry expert and build trust. Retargeting Ads: Retargeting Ads are a great way to stop your potential prospects from shifting to your competitors. Psychologically, when people happen to see a product or a brand consistently over a period of time, they subconsciously build confidence in it. So, retargeting ads are a great way to take your prospects to the next stage of the buyer journey. However, make sure that your ads carry valuable information that aligns with the prospects' interests and they shouldn’t feel annoyed. Social Media: Once a company gains people’s attention, they will start checking its social media pages. So, maintain a high standard on your company's LinkedIn page. Share content regarding a recent breakthrough in your industry, the accomplishments of your company, etc. These aspects can establish a good name for you among the prospects. Stage 2: At the end of stage 1, the prospect would start believing that you are a credible company. In stage 2, the prospect should gain confidence in you that you can solve his pain points. The touchpoints for stage 2 are: Case Studies Comparison Blog Demo Website Case Studies: Case Studies are a powerful marketing strategy that can instantly drive a prospect to purchase your product. It is quite possible because case studies have all the ingredients to gain a prospect’s trust. It demonstrates how your product has solved the pain point of a company and helped them to scale their business. So, the reader would start believing that your product has the potential to solve his pain point and will take action to purchase it. Comparison Blog: Prospects always look into two or more products in the same category before finalizing. They gather possible information about the products and pick the one they feel best among them. So, it is better to come up with a comparison blog that speaks both the advantages and disadvantages of your and your competitor’s product. You must make sure that the reader does not feel you are speaking in favor of your product at any part of the blog. Yet, you must drive the prospect to choose you over the other. Writing comparison blogs is an art and many content marketers are aiming to master it. Demo: The demo is a great way to make your prospect experience what you could solve. You can take a step-by-step visual walkthrough of how your product can make their work life easier. Hence, demo is a result-assuring way to gain customers. Website: Your website is the face of your business. You should optimize and position it in a way that it clearly communicates your ideal customer profile (ICP), benefits, features and capabilities. Add a clear CTA that encourages the prospect to take the next step of the sales funnel. Decision: In this stage, the prospect has almost chosen your product over others. He is just one step away from sealing the deal. The touchpoints that work here are: Free Trial Buyers Guide Pricing Benefits Free Trial: A prospect may feel reluctant to choose your product since he might think that you are charging high. A free trial helps him to witness the positive impacts of your product on his business. So, when he realizes his free trial is about to end, he will rush to pay for your product. Buyers Guide: In B2B, prospects always doubt whether a new product can fit-in into their existing tech stack. A buyer guide with all the instructions for self-service will convince the customer that they can integrate your product effortlessly. Pricing Benefits: Budget shouldn’t be a problem. Present your prospect with a downloadable file that provides them with the choice of different plans, payment options and other benefits. Now, they can pick the plan that matches their budget. Utilize Customers for Future Customers: You should not abandon your customers once they purchase your product. Utilize them as a medium to gain new customers. Because anyhow you are going to start looking for a new potential customer. Encourage your customer to give positive reviews on online forums, and offer loyalty programs that drive to provide referrals in their business circle. Such measures can minimize the touchpoints of a new prospect and enable you to achieve quicker conversions. Conclusion: Identifying and analyzing your customer touchpoints and mapping them can help you have control over the customer journey and enable you to direct them in the desired direction. The activity of your prospects at each touchpoint lets you understand them at a deeper level. This will help you to offer more targeted information at each stage and enhance the customer journey. The blog has gifted you with the touchpoints most prospects would interact with at each stage of the customer journey. Mapping your customer journey accordingly and framing content as directed leads you to maximize your conversions.
